


Daydreams

by pink_lemonade (lamourche)



Category: Push (2009)
Genre: Cassie is seventeen when they get together, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Kira is a bad person, Mature warning is for implied sexual content and off-screen violence, Post-Canon, see end notes if you want details, sorry had to be done, two named characters die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 14:23:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14896214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamourche/pseuds/pink_lemonade
Summary: As much as other girls daydreamed about having superpowers, Cassie daydreamed about being a regular teenager.That boring life sounded so easy, so refreshingly dull. She wouldn't be chased by men with guns. She wouldn't see visions of her own death. She wouldn't have an age-inappropriate attraction to a guy who ruffled her hair and called her kiddo.She really wanted that boring life sometimes.There was definitely something wrong with her, because sometimes she wanted this life too.Like right now.Nick bursts out the back door of the run-down gambling house in Macau. The evening didn't go as well as it should have, she guesses, what with the way he’s stuffing bills in his pockets and yelling at her to run.





	Daydreams

**Author's Note:**

> I've started going through my old WIPs and finishing and posting stories from my old fandoms. I don't know if anyone reads this ship (anymore or ever, really?) but I'm actually really super excited to post this. This movie is my biggest guilty pleasure of all time.

As much as other girls daydreamed about having superpowers, Cassie daydreamed about being a regular teenager.

In Shanghai she even picked out a prom dress. She spotted it in a store window - black, short, strapless. A bit cliché, but a classic for a reason.

She daydreamed about passing notes in class, about smoking behind bleachers, about football games. Maybe she even had a boyfriend who leaned against his locker while she complained about her Calculus exam.

That boring life sounded so easy, so refreshingly dull. She wouldn't be chased by men with guns. She wouldn't see visions of her own death. She wouldn't have an age-inappropriate attraction to a guy who ruffled her hair and called her kiddo.

She really wanted that boring life sometimes.

There was definitely something wrong with her, because sometimes she wanted this life too.

Like right now.

Nick bursts out the back door of the run-down gambling house in Macau. The evening didn't go as well as it should have, she guesses, what with the way he’s stuffing bills in his pockets and yelling at her to run. It isn’t Division, she knows there are no agents waiting for them in this alley, in this casino, in this city. Not tonight at least. It’s just Nick doing something dumb, again.

"You really have a way of making friends," she yells over the incoherent shouting that follows them.

"You know me." He somehow conveys a shrug and a smug smile while running beside her. She can’t see him, but she knows him well enough after traveling together for three months. He grabs her hand as they round another corner. She feels him tighten his grip when she stumbles over the curb. He pulls her up sharply, making sure she doesn't fall. She squeezes his hand back.

There is definitely something wrong with her, but she doesn’t mind.

&&&

After Hong Kong, they had decided traveling with the serum was too dangerous. Three days after arriving in Shanghai, they woke up in a luxury hotel suite with no memory of the last twenty-four hours. Cassie had a new necklace. Nick had a new tattoo. They didn’t try to figure out the clues they left themselves because they didn’t want to know. As soon as they figure out the clues, they would remember where they had hidden the serum and then some Watcher would know.

It’s almost five months to the day that Cassie and Nick had outsmarted Division, when Cassie has a vision of Kira.

The picture is clear, no fuzzy edges, no dreamy haze. Kira is smiling and standing on a ferry heading into a dock. The sign reads Cagliari.

Cassie is sitting across from Nick in a dark café. She hasn't even had her coffee yet. ("I don't know how you can drink that stuff." "Puts hair on my chest.")

Cassie thinks for a moment of not telling Nick. It's selfish and unkind, and it makes her a terrible friend to him, but part of her (most of her, maybe all of her) wants things to stay the way they are. If she has to live on the run, trying to find her mother and avoiding Division agents, she wants it to be like this. She wants to go to sleep knowing that when she wakes up Nick will be there, sleeping on the couch, on the floor, and one memorable night - her birthday even - on the top of a bus. She wants to know that he will continue to look out for her. She likes having him as a friend. She may have daydreams of something more, but she knows that won’t happen. She knows the difference between daydreams and visions now. Either way, she doesn’t want to be on her own again, she wants to be with Nick even if it makes her heart ache a little.

She grips the charm necklace tight in her hand. He won't leave her on her own again, she reminds herself. He's an idiot, but basically a good person.

When the vision dissipates, Nick sits at the small table across from her, waiting. He can always tell when the visions come. He's stopped asking her incessant questions, learning to give her time. Sometimes she doesn't always want to describe how they die.

"I saw her," Cassie admits.

Nick's face lights up.

"She'll be in Sardegna."

Before she even has the sentence out, she can see Nick is calculating how much money they have, how quickly they can leave Istanbul. But not, she hopes, how soon he can ditch the fourteen-year-old.

"You're sure?" he asks.

She nods, head down and unable to meet his eyes. "We need to move quickly, but we’ll find her."

Nick sighs in relief.

As they travel, Nick continues to ask, to make sure that the visions haven't changed. Unfortunately, the visions are getting clearer. She doesn't give him specifics. He's already proven himself to be a bit of a prude.

("You can't watch an R-rated movie." "Do you want me to describe how we die in Shanghai, again?" "I'm finding a Disney movie, and you are watching it." "I'm not five years old, Nick." They watch Lady and the Tramp, and she likes it more than she will ever admit.)

When he asks for more details about Kira, she repeats that she doesn't see any agents or any visions of them dying or any problems of any kind. There aren't any, at least not for Nick and Kira. Cassie sees a problem for herself with the vivid images of nails scratching down Nick's back, and slender, tanned legs wrapping around his waist. It's all very tasteful. Ordinary teenagers have seen worse online, she thinks, but they probably don’t have a crush on the guy getting laid on pornhub. She can only thank the lord the visions don't come with a soundtrack. Before Nick can complain of the cost, in Palermo she buys a better pair of headphones.

Kira must have waited until Division was off her tail to form the intent to meet up with them. She knows how this game is played better than Cassie and Nick. The last day has been the first in months that Cassie hasn't seen something horrific for her and Nick.

Nick takes off running as soon as he sees Kira, as if a second-rate Mover could help a first-rate Pusher. The two hug and it is all very swelling music and movie credits. Cassie slows her walk. This, she knows, will change things, but she's not getting the visions to know if the changes are good or bad. Cassie nods to the other girl. Nick wants it all to work out, that much is obvious. Whenever a waitress or check-in agent would hit on him, he always had a ready story about his beautiful, brunette girlfriend waiting for him.

Kira smiles over Nick's shoulder at her.

& & &

The three of them travel to Ibiza. It’s a kind of hell-scape of university students, drunk and high, but any Division agent would stand right out, so it makes a kind of sense. It should be relaxing or at least boring, because Cassie hasn't had a vision in almost a week.

The problem is, this is her first week without a vision since she was eight years old, since her mother told her that her visions weren't daydreams, but predictions. Her mind doesn't always give her life or death predictions or, fucking worse, tastefully lit sex gifs. Sometimes it's just random people doing random things in the future and she has no way of knowing how it’s connected to Division or her mother, but the visions are always giving her something.

And since the day before they met up with Kira, she's not getting any images. At all.

She tries to talk to them about it while they're walking on the beach. The sun is setting. Cassie guesses it might have been romantic for Kira and Nick without her along, or the topless selfies being taken by drunk college students, but she's not sure. She's never had a boyfriend before, so she doesn't know.

"Couldn't you just be safe?" Nick asks again. "For once?"

"No," Cassie says, "this has never happened."

"Maybe Nick's right." Kira twitches her lips. What else could it be?"

"Are you sure there's no one following you?" Cassie asks Kira. She's never actually said it the last five days, just strongly suggested it.

Kira rolls her eyes. "I waited until I knew it was safe to find you."

Cassie doesn't remind Kira that this whole reunion is her doing, unless it wasn't. She needs more information before she can decide what to do. They seem to be reliving Coney Island, while Cassie is trying to figure out their next move. Cassie never had the option to lay low.

"In your time at Division, do you know of any way they can just stop a Watcher from seeing?"

Cassie hates it. Hates being cut off from the one thing that keeps her safe, the one thing that makes her special.

"Your mom, she was so drugged up she didn't know what she was doing."

Cassie puts up her hands as if to block the images that aren't coming. She falls on her knees. The two of them mutter above her. She can hear terrible music from the disco down the beach, but she can’t hear her own heart. Her mother always told her to trust her own intuition, even when the visions didn’t make sense. Well, Cassie doesn’t even have the visions and she doesn’t want to trust her own intuition, not if it means leaving him.

Her eyes burn with unshed tears. Nick drops down beside her.

"It's going to be okay," Nick mutters.

"None of this is going to be okay," she says, drawing her hands from her eyes.

"We’ll stay here for a while. We’ll lay low, figure it out."

"We have to find out what's going on. I need my visions." She's crying now and she hates herself for it. She sounds like a kid. "I need my mom."

Nick puts his arms around her in an awkward side hug. It’s so endearing, she hates that she can't make fun of him for it.

She wipes her eyes with her sleeve. Nick is looking at her with those pleading puppy dog eyes. She's not going to give in though. She doesn't know what's going on with the visions, but whatever it is, she's the only one who's going to figure it out. They're not a team anymore. It was nice while it lasted.

"Pinky's in Barcelona," Cassie says. She takes a deep breath. "I'm going to meet him there."

Nick looks shocked. Kira rolls her eyes again.

"He can Shadow me. He's got someone he's still looking for, too."

Nick and Kira look at each other. The two of them don't have anyone else to look for, and if they keep a low profile Division might leave them alone for awhile. Division has been burned going after Kira so they will think twice about doing it again. Cassie would be worried about Nick, but she trusts Kira to take care of him. She doesn't trust Kira for anything else.

Cassie packs her bag that night. Nick paces around the room, trying to convince her to stay. But he's not going to leave, that's the thing. She knows him too well now. Kira is here and she has no interest in taking down Division. Kira just wants a beach and a cheap motel and her boyfriend.

Cassie watches Nick run his hands through his hair. Cassie would want the same thing too, if he were the boyfriend.

"Look, it's been real, Nick."

"You're really doing this?"

"I have to, I have to find out what's going on."

He nods, suddenly resolute, formulating a plan. "We’ll meet up in a few weeks."

"Don't make promises you won't keep."

"Come on Cass, just give us some time."

He really wants it to work, and she wants him to be happy. What she wants isn’t possible, she knows that.

"After a few weeks, the three of us can look for your mom together."

 He looks expectant. Cassie hates the feeling of hope blossoming in her chest. Maybe she won’t be on her own again, not for long anyway. She gives into him. It was inevitable. She looks up at him, meeting his eye. "Something’s happening in that city from the book. The one in the store window."

It takes a moment, but he nods, getting it. "We'll meet in the square from the movie."

They’ve gotten into this habit. She has no idea if it keeps a Watcher from seeing, but they’ve done it too long to stop now. It’s comforting.

"Five weeks from when you fell in that pit." She laughs.

He huffs. "Fine."

"Don't worry, Kira will do almost as good a job looking after you as I have."

He takes a deep breath, hands on his hips, looking up.

She knows what he wants to ask. He's almost asked so many times, before and after they met up with Kira, but he’s always stopped himself. Cassie must like him, because she's not going to make him say it. She can do this for him, at least.

"I don't know what it's like. It's never happened to me." Well, that she knows of, but that's all she has.

"I never asked—"

"They didn't even do it to my mom when they caught her. Division agents aren't supposed to Push Watchers."

"She's not a Division agent."

"So, I don't have first-hand experience but I've heard that you'll start to lose time, a little. You'll forget and then remember. Some people say the images, whatever it is they put in your head, are different from regular memories, but that might just be wishful thinking."

Nick nods.

"You'll be fine. Being on the run with her, it's safer than with me."

Hey," Nick says, grabbing her arm. "It’ll be okay."

"Sure thing, champ." She wishes she didn't sound so sad.

Nick pulls her in for a hug. He's warm and she can feel his heart beating. He's so good at hugging. He's tall and looming and feels like home, like those long nights of nightmares when he would rock her to sleep. She hates how good at hugging he is.

"I shouldn't let you go on your own."

"You're not the boss of me, I keep telling you." Cassie sighs. "I was on my own before I met you."

Nick lets her go reluctantly. Kira is waiting outside, a kind of respectful distance as if this were an awkward break up instead of whatever the hell it is.

"Look after him," Cassie says.

Kira nods. "You know I will."

Cassie walks to the docks.

&&&

Cassie might have made it seem like she and Pinky were in contact before Sardegna. She might have made it seem like they had a way of communicating when all she had was a vision of Pinky looking for his sister in Barcelona. They’re both second generation Shadows.

A day after leaving Ibiza the visions come back. She's on her own on a fourteen-hour train ride from Genoa with a half a bottle of water. It fucking hurts. It's a barrage of images that pummel her brain. She pulls out her sketchbook and the pens Nick gave her before she left. She starts drawing.

It takes Cassie four days to track Pinky. They spend two weeks together. She gives him as much information as she can about his sister, but there isn't much. Pinky is more vocal about not wanting to spend time with a teenager than Nick. He doesn't pretend to be irritated with her, he is irritated with her.

She has a week to get to Berlin. Pinky is going to Amsterdam to track his sister. He does ask Cassie if she wants to go with him. It's a nice offer even though he looks physically pained to be making it. Cassie waves to Pinky as he gets into a van packed with students.

Cassie’s not worried though. She's seen Nick in Berlin. She knows he’s going there and he wants her to know he's going there. She's seen them hugging in the square. She doesn't know what is going to come after but she knows that they will be together again. She's seen Kira in Berlin, too. She knows what it means, more awkward dinners and even better headphones to buy, but it's worth it. It's worth not traveling on her own again.

It's raining when she arrives in Berlin. She gets to the square at the right day and time. She’s standing in a corner under an awning trying to stay dry, thinking about his dorky smile and his ridiculous biceps, and remembering how he seems like home. She's grinning but trying really hard not to. It's all going to work out.

&&&

She waits three days. On the fourth day, she swears it will be the last. She swears it. She hugs herself to stay warm.

&&&

Nick likes to think he's a good person.

Yeah, he had a shitty childhood. He knows there are worse, but his was pretty fucking bad. He still wakes up in a cold sweat occasionally, after a nightmare about his father’s death. Sometimes he just wants to lay low and not think about Division and men with guns coming after him. They really weren't that interested in him, until Cassie showed up, well Kira showed up, in Hong Kong. He used to think Kira would be the girl with the flower, the one he had been told to help. But it was Cassie. Cassie, that he lets get on that ferry by herself to Genoa. She never turns around after saying good-bye on the dock. She moves across the gangplank without a second glance. Well, he will see her in four weeks. She's good at looking after herself, he thinks.

He tries not to think about Cassie.  He tries not to when he’s with Kira at the beach, getting drunk and running cons on college students. He tries not to when he's frankly relieved not to have a fourteen-year-old sleeping next door to him and his girlfriend. He tries not to when he and Kira get on the train in Rome and sleep on a bench in a train station in Germany. He tries not to a lot.

He's in the shower, scrubbing off the grime of too many days on the road and a night in a train station when he remembers. He remembers that he forgot. It's like walking into another room and forgetting what you went in there for. Anyway, he knows there is something he forgot.

He lets the hot water fall over him, and for the life of him, he can't remember what he forgot.

"Babe," Kira yells. "You sure you know where to meet her?"

"Yeah, unless . . ."

"What?" Kira yells over the sound of the shower.

"Unless she got taken or . . . god, worse. I shouldn't have let her—"

"She hasn't been taken."

"How do you know?"

"What are you saying?"

"How do you know she hasn't been fucking taken?"

"I thought we were over this." Kira barges into the shower.

Nick glances up. "Yeah, of course. I'm sorry. I'm just worried about her. She's just a kid."

"She can take care of herself."

Cassie didn't know about the weird eye thing he thinks. He'll have to warn her, the next time he sees her.

"She'll be at the Potsdamerplatz.

&&&

"Why didn't she show?" Kira asks angrily.

"I don't know."  He puts his head in his hands, trying to hide his relief. He didn't give her away. She's alone and it's raining, but she isn't in Division custody.

"I need to make a call," Kira says.

"Who the fuck do you need to call?" He doesn't even get it out before Division agents swarm the room. They give Kira a wide berth and train their guns on Nick. Well, he should have seen that coming, even without a Watcher.

So, he's not a good person, but he didn't get his friend taken by Division agents. Instead, she's a fourteen-year-old girl on the run by herself, but that’s all he's got at this point.

&&&

Kira drops him when they get back to Division. Meeting up with him was only to get the serum back and get intel on Cassie and her mother. Division thinks the two are in contact somehow, even with Cassie's mom in a heavily guarded Division facility. Nick knows they aren’t, but Division thinks it’s the only way Cassie would have made it this far on her own. He doesn’t try to convince them otherwise. Kira let Cassie go in Ibiza, thinking Division would tail her and learn something. Cassie lost their tail in Genoa. Of course she did, he thinks with a smile.

Whatever Division does to him, and some of it is unpleasant and some of it makes him lose time and all of it makes him stare at the four walls of his basement cell in a stupor, they don’t get the location of the serum or any information about Cassie out of him. After a while, probably a lot longer than he realizes, they stop trying.

He's a second-rate Mover who never gets much better. Too many years spent not using his powers. Soon he doesn't warrant much interest. A year after Berlin, and he's a low-level agent, not even rated for field work. He doesn’t care much about anything, moving blindly through his days.

Division is a bureaucracy like any other, there's paperwork and ID badges and HR managers trying to keep everyone in line. He gets a paycheck. It goes somewhere. He doesn't spend any money. He lives in a Division dorm, eats their food. Most nights, he drinks himself to sleep and tries to convince himself Cassie is better off without him.

Eventually, he's sent to work at a Division storage facility. They need a place to store all those toothbrushes and, ugh, whatever the hell else.

"Fuck," the file clerk says, "you know anything about this Hong Kong incident awhile back?"

Nick wouldn't, except he's guessing he _was_ the Hong Kong incident.

"Nah," Nick says, "what happened?"

"Some kid outsmarted Division, got away with the super-secret serum. You couldn’t make this shit up."

"What's the problem?" Nicks asks, trying to keep his voice steady.

"Do I file this under Hong Kong or Athens?"

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Nick can't believe he works in the same department as this idiot. He wonders what Cassie would think.

"They lost the kid in Athens," the file clerk says shoving a manila folder into the drawer.

Nick has to force himself not to Move the guy into the nearest cement pillar to find out what he knows. "They going after her- the kid?"

The file clerk slams the door shut. "Not enough agents. They want to take down the Barcelona gang first, but they have a couple of good Shadows. Besides, she's just a kid, how far can she get on her own?"

So Cassie is safe for now, and Pinky and his sister are still with the Barcelona gang. Nick smiles.

"Why you smiling? I've heard about your skills. Think they are going to rate you for field work?"

Nick hadn't wanted to be rated for field work, he didn't want to be a killer for Division. He had thought if he stayed here in the file room of this forgotten facility, he could at least find Cassie's mom. Then when he broke out of here somehow and met up with her, he wouldn’t be empty handed. He would have something more to say to her than ‘sorry about Berlin and my ex-girlfriend’. The problem is he hasn't found anything on Cassie's mom. She doesn't exist as far as official Division is concerned. He has no leads.

If he leaves now, he'll probably be captured and whatever they do to him this time will be worse than last time. Last time was pretty fucking bad. The fact that he has spent so much time shuffling paperwork and keeping his head down, tells him how bad it was, how long it lingered, even when he tried to forget, even after the wounds healed.

He can’t let that happen again, he needs to be able help Cassie when he finds her. Not be a liability. He won’t let them take her.

He's been stewing in his mediocrity while a fifteen year old, holy shit she’s almost sixteen now, continues to live by her wits.

Nick decides maybe he could be a better person.

&&&

It's not that hard to do marginally better than the other file clerks. He doesn’t want to stand out or raise any suspicion. He improves slowly over next few months. He just needs to get good enough to get out of there. Flirting with the agent in charge of transfers helps. There's a station in Paris and from there he can find Cassie. What the hell he’s going to say to her, he doesn't know. The kid needs someone to look after her (probably doesn't though).

"We got a weird one today."

"Dude, I don’t want to know." Nick leans back in his chair. He's got twenty-four hours before his transfer goes through, whatever they throw at him he can take it.

"It's a person."

"They’re storing a body here." Fucking gross.

"No, she's staying here while they transfer her to the next facility. The one in Argentina that everyone pretends doesn't exist."

That's the one where Cassie's mom must be, and he's done all he can to find out more about it. Maybe with this transfer he can find out something useful so he doesn't show up empty handed.

The Division agents wheel the gurney in the warehouse late that night. They’re tired and bored and when Nick offers them the beer in the back, they don't give it a second thought.

He checks the clipboard hanging off the side of the bed. He has to find the secret location in Argentina. Whatever this person did, it was serious. Her name's Sybil—ah, fuck.

"It's a good thing you're pretty," she whispers.

He's such a fucking idiot.

"That's what your daughter says."

Cassie's mom smiles. Her breathing is labored and her eyes are milky gray. She reaches out to hold his hand. "Thank you for taking care of her."

Oh god, there really is no way this could get any worse.

"I didn't, really — you may not know—"

"In the future, I mean."

"Yeah, of course."

"You have to leave tonight though, the girl in HR isn't as dumb as you hoped." She coughs and when she speaks he can barely hear her. "Tell Cassie I'll see her again, and tell her I liked the purple best. Then get the serum and find me." She stuffs a piece of paper in his hand, but he doesn't open it.

There's a lot he wants to say. He wants to apologize. He wants to explain. He wants to know when she met his dad. How else would he have known about a girl with a flower, but for Cassie’s mom?

"There’s one other thing," she says, gesturing for him to lean down so she can whisper the rest.

When he stands up, he wipes the tears from his eyes.

"It's time for you to go, so I don't have to see you dead in this warehouse again." He grabs his backpack, and he doesn't look back.

&&&

The last vision Cassie had of Nick was hugging him in the rain in Berlin. She curses him for not making it come true.

So she imagines a vision of Nick.

The idiot is bleeding out in a hotel room floor. He’s conveniently nearby, alone and calling out her name. Sometimes when she's feeling generous, she finds him in time. When she's not, she doesn’t. But he always professes his deep, deep regret at not meeting her in Berlin. He’s desperate to make her understand how he has never forgotten her, how he is heartbroken that he never told her how he cares. It's a moving scene, really.

"Where the fuck is our goddamn beer?"

The voice pulls her out of her daydreams. She hates American college students. She hates them with a passion only second to Division agents. But laying low surrounded by drunk college students is still a good way to keep ahead of Division. They haven't been interested in her in a while but she shouldn't get lazy.

Some guy grabs her ass. She spins on him, slamming her boot into his foot. She can't anticipate everything, so she took some self-defense classes. He shoots up out of his chair to lunge for her. She steps back, ready to fight when he's forcefully pushed to the ground.

"Cassie, we need to leave."

Oh fuck, she knows that voice. She looks up at him. He's here. He's not dying, unfortunately. He looks good, actually. Fuck, he looks even better than before, hands on his hips, impatient look on his face. He's not professing his regret at abandoning her or any tender feelings. She really needs to stop reading before bed.

"Bitch—" the guy stands. Nick pushes him to the ground again.

"We need to leave."

A chair scrapes on the wood floor. "Listen you two—"

"Shut up," Cassie and Nick shout at the same time.

Nick raises his finger to Cassie like a librarian shushing a student. He turns around, punches and . the asshole falls to the floor.

"We're going."

"I need to get back to work." She spins around and walks to the bar, slamming her empty tray on the counter.

"That guy giving you any trouble," the bartender says.

"He's leaving."

"He's cute."

"No, he isn't."

"Yes, I am."

"You need to go." She can't think about this now. Her heart is beating fast, and she wants to put her head between her knees to stop the panic attack that threatens.

"Cassie, please . . . I spoke to your mother."

How dare he-

"She liked the purple best."

Cassie grips the edge of the bar. "She sees the future not the past. How did she—"

"We need to get the serum. I know where she is."

They're going on an adventure again. Just like old times. She starts to form a smile, but then she realizes. "She sent you to me."

Of course, he wouldn't have come on his own. Of course not. She hates him in this moment. Hates herself for hoping all these years that he would find her. She wants to punch him in the face and leave him. But god, she wants to see her mother. She’s spent too long getting drinks for college students in every shit bar in Europe. It's time to get back in it. She just wishes it wasn't with him, like this.

Cassie turns to the bartender. "Remember when I said, I might have to leave."

"He’s a good reason."

Cassie doesn't turn around to see Nick's reaction. "He's the reason a few armed men might be coming through the door."

"Hey—"

"Don’t tell me you've gotten better at dodging them."

"They didn't follow me—"

The door bursts open.

Cassie grabs his hand and takes off running. She's gotten too relaxed. All her things are at the hostel. She has nothing but her boots and her necklace.

&&&

They don't stop running until they're back in Shanghai. Somehow Nick got decent passports and credit cards, so it doesn’t take long.

They're sitting in a small noodle shop far from any busy streets. It's early evening. They sit side by side, both with their backs to the far wall so they can see anyone coming. They've not talked much, dancing around each other, overly polite, not sure how to behave around each other. The only thing to do now is get the serum, but as soon as they start to decipher the clues they left themselves, they will form the intent. Then a Division Watcher will be able to track them.

"You chose the tattoo," Nick says flatly.

Cassie wants to refute him but she can't. Of course, she picked out the tattoo.

He sighs. "No one else would have made me get this."

"Well, champ, I'm sure you put up a fight." She can't help the laughter that bubbles up.

She takes off her necklace and hands it to him. It's strange not to feel the weight of it around her neck. She hasn't taken it off since they woke up in that hotel room. He takes it, their fingers brushing.

"Are we doing this?" She asks.

He nods.

She holds his bicep. She stifles a laugh at the image of the growling tiger. Could she have put a code in the design? No, she wouldn't do anything that obvious.

"You have no idea the number of times I've cursed you for this tattoo."

"As bad as leaving you alone in a foreign city when you're fourteen."

"Oh god, Cassie, I—"

"Whatever." She shouldn't have mentioned it. "Let's just figure this out so you can leave again."

She can feel the weight of his gaze as she inspects his arm. When she asked him about the scar on his arm, he made up a story about a pirate and she never got a real answer.

He takes a deep breath. "I never planned to ditch you. I planned to meet with you in Alexanderplatz."

"I know." She doesn't want this. She doesn't want this conversation, ever. The pressure behind her eyes is growing. "I saw."

"Oh god, of course." He puts his hand on her cheek. Her breath catches, and he pulls away. She looks up at him.

"It was the night before we were supposed to meet, that's when I realized she had been Pushing me. I couldn’t risk her taking you too."

She never once considered Kira was working with Division and would turn him in, not really. Sure, Cassie thought about it back then, but she realized long ago that she was just jealous of the other woman. He must have been devastated.

 "I guess that’s something." She tries to make her voice light.

"Their eyes do this thing, get dark and then disappear almost completely, did you know?"

Cassie shakes her head. He looks sad, at losing her or Kira, she's not sure. When Cassie mentioned the other girl’s absence, Nick hadn’t wanted to talk about it. She had guessed it was a lover's quarrel. Not this. She had half expected to get a vision of their reconciliation. She had been steeling herself for it.

"I thought, I gotta tell Cassie this, about the eyes." He looks down fiddling with the charm as if to open it. "I told her the meeting was somewhere else. She always believed, you know, that we were too dumb to make it on our own. Division never found the guy who wiped us or, uh, got any information about you."

What does that mean? Oh god.

"Did they hurt you?" She's spent this whole time feeling sorry for herself.

Nick is inspecting the locket, but his eyes are glazed over. He looks a lot like she suspects she does when caught in a vision. "Nick, what happened? Did they hurt you?"

"Nah, you know me." He gives a half-hearted smile, averts his eyes.

What did they do to him? She wants to know, but he doesn’t seem ready to tell. She stops herself from hugging him, changing the subject. "You really met my mom?"

"I was working in a Division storage facility when she showed up."

Cassie’s fingers tighten on his arm. "She's okay?"

"She's alive."

That Nick, always trying to find the bright side.

"She gave me a piece of paper with the location on it. Haven’t read it yet. She said we’ll see her again."

"Did she say anything else?"

He hesitates but shakes his head. He's lying, but it must have been something just for him.

She doesn't know how to talk to him. She’s hated him these last three years for running into Kira's arms, for letting her get on that ferry, for not meeting her in Berlin. Most importantly, for not fixing everything like he did in Hong Kong. He was the hero of her dreams then. Now he's just handsome, idiot Nick. Maybe not even that much of an idiot anymore. "You've gotten better at Moving." He had left two Division agents on the ground in that alley in Amsterdam.

"I had to do something while I was looking for you."

"You looked for me?" She hates the desperation in her voice.

"Uh, yeah, before your mom showed up. I pretended to want to become a field agent, so I got some training. I tried to find her and you, but I—"

"It's okay," Cassie says. She might even mean it.

"It's not, really." His voice is small.

He's still fiddling with the charm, and she's still staring at his bicep. Why did she make him get this ridiculous tattoo? What does it remind her of? She’s trying to think about what he said and not read into it too much. Even if he did look for her.

She starts laughing when she remembers where she recognizes the tattoo from.

He huffs above her. "Did you finally remember why you made me get this monstrosity?"

"Yes."

He's looking down at her trying not to smile.

"What about the charm?"

"Yeah, I remember." He shows her the open locket.

"What does it mean?"

"Is the tattoo some kind of number sequence?"

She nods.

"Don't think on it yet, but you’ll remember?"

"Yeah, I’ll remember."

"Good. I know where the lock is."

He grabs her hand.

He does that a lot lately. Holding her hand or pushing his leg against hers when they sit next to each other. On the plane, half asleep, she felt him nudge her so that she could rest her head on his shoulder. She doesn't mind. She should, because she knows it doesn't mean what, even after all this time, she wants it to mean.

They walk out of the restaurant and she holds his hand back. It feels nice.

&&&

They make it to Argentina. Cassie's visions are coming too fast, and they don't make sense. In some she sees her mother dying. In some she sees Nick dying. She's tired of all the dying. The guy her mom sent said they aren't supposed to go to the facility for three more days. Cassie wants to use the time productively.

"Getting drunk is not productive."

"So, you say," she's leaning sitting at the bar and against Nick's bicep which she really likes. He's staying sober.

She sneaks a glance at him, trying to be sly. Goddamn she wishes he didn’t look so good. He’s gotten better looking, the jerk. She also thinks, maybe, just maybe, he was checking her out in that dressing room in Shanghai. She’s not sure though. He looked away pretty quick when she caught his eye. Wait a minute.

"Are you greasy?" she asks, eyes wide.

"What are you talking about?" he says, downing his glass of water.

"You are!" Oh god, he is. How did she miss this? Really, it probably works to her advantage.

"You shouldn't be drinking."

"I've been on my own for three years, longer than that really." She leans her head in her hand. She raises an eyebrow at him. "I went to a strip club in Paris."

"I feel guilty enough, please don't do this."

"I worked in a bar in Greece."

"That doesn't sound so bad—"

"It was topless."

"Oh my god, Cassie," he turns his body to her. He looks sad, and he's holding her hand in his, staring down at it. "I never should have let you leave."

She pats his head. She’s lying about the bar, but she did work at the strip club, washing dishes only. She thinks he deserves to feel a little awful, but now he looks anguished. "It's okay. I turned out okay. I did good, right?"

"You did great," he says.

"It's easy to avoid jerks when you can see the future."

"Oh Cassie, I'm so sorry." He pulls her into him.

She wraps her arms around him, and he is still so good at hugging. She hasn't felt this good in years, but she pulls back.

If she gets too comfortable or too drunk, she might start crying or do something worse like kiss him. That want hasn't gone away, not in three years, not even when she knew it was weird. If she had been any other girl she would have had a crush on an actor or a musician or someone completely unobtainable. He _was_ unobtainable, but he was also right there, looking after her, hugging her, making sure she didn't drink too much and she didn't die.

She decided long ago that even though there were many, many things wrong with her life, her mother being taken, living on the run, practically raising herself, there wasn't anything wrong with her desire for him, as foolish and as problematic she knew it was, it was honest and it was real and it kept her warm these last three years, even when she hated him for it.

He doesn't let go when she pulls back, not completely. He keeps an arm around her and scoots his stool closer to hers.

&&&

Nick doesn't like any plan that puts Cassie in danger. The problem is, every plan puts Cassie in danger.

If her mother’s plan works, then Cassie will be safe. He knows Cassie will hate it when she learns the truth, but he promised her mother. He decided long ago that between the three of them, he wouldn’t be making the decisions. He was the one that decided to trust Kira, and look where that got them.

"Where do you want to go?" he asks, as he watches Cassie pack the backpack. She's already changed into the custodial uniform. They will be traveling with the cleaning crew into the facility. Her hair is pulled back in a tight bun, tucked under her cap. He misses it. He likes the exuberance of it. (He likes the way it feels against his cheek when she falls asleep next to him. He tries to ignore that. He tries to ignore a lot of things, like the satisfied smile she gives when she makes a sarcastic remark or the way her hips sway when she walks.)

"What?"

"When this is over, where do you want to go?"

She looks up at him, quizzical look on her face. "I guess, wherever we can go with my mom, she's probably going to need medical care or something. We'll figure it out."

"Of course we will." He tries to sound confident.

She stands. "You don't have to."

"What?"

"You don't have to come with us." She's looking away as she says it, as if she doesn't know how to get the words out.

"I told you I wasn't leaving you." He has said so many times the last few weeks, he's sure she's tired of hearing it, but he will keep telling her until she believes it.

"You don't have to say that, I'm not a kid."

"I know you aren't a kid." Christ, he knows it too well.

She huffs. "Can we just get this over with?"

He can hear the nerves in her voice, as much as she has schooled herself in the intervening years not to show them.

There is so much he wants to say, but he knows this isn't the right time.

The problem is, it’s never the right time time, but there is so much he wants to tell her - like how he hates it when he wakes up and she's already out of bed, having a cigarette outside of whatever shitty hotel room they are staying in. He's gotten over the smoking, it's the being alone he can't stand. He hates waking up without her now. He wants to reach for her, wrap her in his arms, but he holds himself back. It wasn't an accident when he saw her changing in that dressing room in Shanghai as much of an asshole that makes him. When he saw her in that bar in Amsterdam he wanted to throw his arms around her, because she was the Cassie of his memory but also the new Cassie who grew up without him, and who probably didn't need him. He wanted her need him, wanted her to feel the same way. He knows that means there’s something wrong with him, but its undeniable the way he feels about her. She’s all he’s cared about for a long time. He'll do anything to keep her safe.

"Nick, what you are waiting for? Let's go."

There's no way he can explain any of this now. God, he's a fucking mess.

Cassie turns around and leaves the room. Nick picks up the keys to the truck and promises himself if they live through this day, he will tell her everything. She'll probably hate him, more than she does already, but he's done lying to her and to himself.

&&&

Another small explosion goes off on another side of the building and Cassie marvels at her mother's abilities. She smiles, she's going to see her mother. She's seen it in her visions. Nick’s going to be there, too.

Cassie puts the gun in her other hand, restless. She doesn't like carrying a gun. She's pretty sure her aim is shit, but when she and Nick separated – her mother's plan called for Cassie to set explosions around the perimeter – Nick forced her to take it.

Cassie's running to the ward now. There are a lot of highly placed Division agents here, and she's hoping they will take out enough that Division isn't a problem for a few years. She rounds another corner.

She's going to see her mother again. It's been so long since she has seen her, and Cassie needs to get her out of here, needs for them to be a family again. She's finally going to save her mother. She pushes open the double doors. Her mother is here. She sees her across the room. She looks like a ghost of her old self, frail and aged beyond her years, but she's here. She smiles at Cassie.  

Nick enters from the side door. His shirt is torn, and there's blood on his face, but he's alive. Cassie wants to hug him. Their plan is going to work. Everything is going to be fine, she thinks, but then suddenly it isn’t.

Nick has a syringe in his hand. Those stupid fucking syringes that they've had to deal with since Hong Kong. Cassie hopes all of them explode in the bombs about to go off in twenty minutes. Why does he have the syringe in his hand?

Cassie starts running. Nick's leaning over her mother's bed. Cassie hears screaming. She claws at his back, wrenching his arm.

He shoves her off. She lands on the floor, hard. Oh god, was he being Pushed this whole time?

"Cassandra," her mother calls, voice hoarse as if unused to speaking. "I told him too."

"No, no, no—"

"It's the only way to keep you safe."

Cassie stands, moving to her mother's bedside.

 "It's the only way to keep you safe. There is no version where I don’t die, but this way we get something in return." She looks up at Nick, nodding to him.

Cassie can see the moment when the serum starts. Her mother is powerful without it, but with it, Cassie can't imagine what she sees, how many versions of the future she must be sorting through.

Nick pulls Cassie's notebook out of the backpack. Her mother starts reeling off words and numbers and Nick can barely keep up.

"This was the plan, all along." Cassie whispers. She hesitates to touch her mother's arm, it looks so fragile, the skin paper thin, bruising from IV's and who knows whatever the hell else. Cassie holds her mother's hand.

Nick nods even as he continues to write the words her mother says. Cities to avoid, people who will help, entire years when they need to be extra careful.

"She made me promise," Nick says, eyes not moving from the notebook. "It is the only way to keep you safe. They won't ever stop coming for you."

Cassie feels the tears falling down her cheeks. "She won't survive."

He shakes his head. At least he isn't lying anymore.

A door slams open. Cassie lifts the gun and shoots without thinking, twice, three times. The only people on the planet she cares about are standing next to her, and she wonders if she will feel bad later. She looks at the man who falls to the floor. It's the Division agent from Hong Kong and she knows she won't feel bad later.

Her mother rests back on the pillow, looking at Cassie with a sad smile. "We could have done this without putting you in danger, but I wanted to see you again."

"I hate you," Cassie says which must be the world's shittiest thing to say to your dying mother, but she's crying and her mom just continues smiling at her, holding her hand. "I hate your plan."

"You're so brave," her mom says. "I'm sorry you had to be so brave."

Nick shoves the notebook in his backpack. "We have to go now. They're coming."

Her mother reaches out to hold Nick's hand. "Thank you," she says. "For everything, for forever."

Her mother closes her eyes. She looks peaceful, and Cassie fucking hates it. She wants her real mother back, not the woman in the hospital gown but the woman who outsmarted Division for so many years, the woman who had so much strength you could feel it coming off her in waves. She wants her mom back, but her mom's breathing has slowed and her grip on Cassie's hand loosens.

No, no, no. No, this can't be it. It can't be over. It can't end here with her mother in a hospital bed looking like a fragile ghost.

"We have to go," Nick says, insistent.  He grabs her hand, but she doesn't want to leave, she doesn't want to leave her mother here.  This can't be how it ends.  Nick is dragging her out of the room.  Cassie can hear someone running in the halls.  But Cassie can't move, can't think, can't understand.

Nick pulls her into a utility room, looking the door behind them as if someone couldn't just shoot the door handle.  He's such an idiot.

She slumps to the floor. What is she running to, running from, now? There’s nothing left. Just this lumbering idiot she can hear muttering above her.

Suddenly his face is front of her. She wants to punch his stupid, handsome face. He’s crouching next to her.

"We gotta go, okay? This place is going to blow."

"What happened to you?" she asks, ignoring the sounds of yelling that seem to be getting louder. "Why is there blood on your shirt?"

"I tripped."

"You're such an idiot."

"I know, Cassie, but let's go." He's pleading now, looking over his shoulder, looking scared.

She sniffles, hating that she must sound like a kid.

"A week," she whispers.

"What are you taking about?"

"A week," she says, voice a little stronger now.

He blinks, slowly. "I don’t—"

"I waited a week for you."

Understanding slowly dawns, he looks anguished.

He reaches up, pushing her hair from her face, wiping tears from her cheeks.

"Oh my God, Cassie, I-."

"It was raining but in the visions I never got rained on because you were there so I didn’t bring an umbrella."

He runs his hands through her hair, gripping tight as if she’s threatening to leave. He leans his forehead against hers. She’s shaking. She can't believe her mother’s whole plan could come to nothing because she is sitting here telling him the one thing she promised herself she would never tell him. The only secret of her life that she's so afraid of that when she remembers it — remembers shivering through that week, remembers sleeping on that park bench, remembers being so hungry and so scared — she feels like her heart is beating out of her chest.  

"I never got a vision of you. I thought you were dead, but I told myself you were probably just off with your girlfriend because if you were dead, then — then I wasn't going to make it." She grips his shirt in her hands. "I hated you, because if you — you were dead, I wasn’t going to — I couldn’t."

He pulls her closer. "I’m not leaving you, again, okay?" She can feel his breath on her skin. It feels like a blessing. "Not because of some visions or fate, but because I want to stay. I chose you, okay? Cause it’s you."

She's nodding dumbly into his chest. She doesn’t know if she should believe him, but her heart is too wrapped up in him now and the rest of her has no choice but to follow.

"We gotta go, you can punch me later, okay?" He pulls back, tentative smile on his face.

She pats his blood-stained cheek. What happened to him?

"Cass, we gotta go. We're almost out of here."

He pulls her up. She stands. Once again they are running from men with guns, hands gripped tight.

 

&&&

Cassie doesn’t learn until years later what he meant exactly when he said I chose you, what the torn shirt and blood stains were all about. She tried not to think about it, actually. She wasn't sure she wanted to know. They run into Emily and Hook a few months later in Chile and then a few years later in Dubai.

Hook and Nick passed out an hour earlier in the Cavalli Club. Neither of the two men can really hold their liquor.

"I still can't believe he did it, can you?" Emily looks her in the eye, above the whiskey she's sipping. "I mean it was clear they weren't going to last, but taking her out like that?"

Cassie's hand grips her glass tight, pausing as she brings it to her lips.

"He didn’t tell you, did he?" Emily sounds surprised. Cassie, though, is good a reading people and she wonders if Emily knows that he never told her.

"Sure, he did." She sounds unconvincing even to her own ears, but Emily is going to tell her the story regardless. Cassie sets down her drink. "Kira?"

She hasn’t had any visions of the other woman since Argentina. She doesn't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Emily glances over at the two men snoring, glances back at Cassie.

"In Argentina, before he found your mom, Kira caught him."

Cassie takes a deep breath.

"She was messing with your visions in Ibiza. He never learned how but he knew it was her or someone working with her."

Cassie had always guessed it was something like that. Some talent undiscovered that had the ability to stop her visions. It must have been some deep special project of Division. It's never happened again, not since that week.

"She threatened you, said she would Push him so he was the one who hurt you. He didn’t hesitate."

Cassie looks over at him. He’s sleeping peacefully. The only way that's true, the only way he survived is that Kira didn’t Push him soon enough, that she had tried convince him first, relying on his feelings for her. Cassie tries to muster up some kind of feeling of guilt over the other woman's death, but she can’t. She only feels immense relief.

"He told Hook in Chile."

Cassie tenses. "He felt guilty?" Of course, he did. Who wouldn't? Well, I probably wouldn't, Cassie thinks, but there's something wrong with me.

"No," Emily says, flagging down the bartender. "He felt bad that he didn’t feel guilty. I don’t think he ever felt bad about doing it."

"I had the gun."

"Huh?"

"I had the only gun when we split up."

Emily raises an eyebrow. "You want another drink?"

"Yeah." She wants lots.

&&&

But that was later, and this is right now.

Cassie wakes slowly. The only sound is the surf, waves crashing steady on the beach. The sun is barely up.

 It took a while, to wake and not think who's trying to kill us, who's coming after us. There hasn't been anyone in a while. It’s been six months since they raided the facility. Her visions have been happily mundane.

Nick rolls over. His arm falling over her, pulling her closer, a leg moving over her thigh. She runs her hand down his arm, the raised white lines, like a river carving a path in stone. He had wanted to hide the other scars from her, the ones on his back, his thighs. They spend too much time too close together now, but he still hasn’t told her. Not really. Maybe someday he will tell her what happened.

One thing that hasn’t changed from before is how he sleeps like the dead. It used to scare her, how she couldn't rouse him. The amount of times she has woken him up, pounding on his chest screaming at him, it must have given him nightmares. He never complained, though. He would always do the same thing, take her wrists gently in his hands and remind her over and over again that he wasn't leaving, that he wasn't going anywhere.

She believes him this time and not just because of the visions. They showed her that hug in Berlin, too. She knows it as well as she knows what his smile feels like against her lips and the way his hands feel on her waist, fingers digging into her skin.

It took him a while to accept it, what they both wanted. He was such a gentleman about the whole thing. It felt like ages after Argentina, but she had waited three years for him. She could give him a few months to come to terms whatever it was he was going through, being attracted to her. She didn't even get drunk and throw herself at him, as much as she wanted to.

She moves out of his tangled embrace to stand in the warm air of their small hut, just a mattress on the floor and a few basic necessities.

("It's like the beginning of a horror movie," Nick had said when they arrived in the middle of the night. The only sound was the fading whir of the motor boat as it returned to the mainland. "Well, I'm glad I'm not the pretty one," Cassie said, "they always go first." The hut _was_ a little ominous in the moonlight, she thought. Nick came up to stand beside her, whispering in her ear. "Don’t sell yourself short, I’m sure you’ll be next after me." She elbowed him in the stomach. "Oof, just as long as we agree I’m the pretty one." She rolled her eyes. "You're greasy." "You love it," he said, breath stuttering. They've never actually said it. She elbowed him again so he wouldn't feel weird. He fell on the ground, pulling her down on top of him when she tried to help him up.)

Cassie slips on her bathing suit. The bikini made Nick's face so red the first time he saw it on her, she almost fist-pumped in victory. (So, she never threw herself at him, but she wasn't above playing dirty.) She leans against the doorway of the hut. She isn't sure how long they’re staying. They will need more supplies sometime. They can't live on this beach forever, but for once she doesn't care what happens then. The present is the only thing she cares about. She has Nick, and if something replaces Division and comes after them, they will protect each other.

The morning light is sparkling on the blue water and a breeze is running through the trees. She doesn’t think she's ever known this kind of peace.

Nick wraps his arm around her shoulders. She can feel his warm body against her back, his cheek nuzzling her hair, his breath fanning her skin.

"Wanna swim?"

She nods.

"Let's go." He entwines her hand with his, pulling her down the beach. "Let's go together."

**Author's Note:**

> Cassie's mom dies to help save her; Nick kills Kira off-screen when she threatens Cassie, references to Nick being interrogated/tortured, but it really does have a happy ending, I swear. Thank you for reading!


End file.
